Not a Necromancer
by Tor Raptor
Summary: Peter Parker decides to confront Doctor Strange about the events of Endgame.


**So I watched Endgame for the fourth time last night and that urged me to finally post this short one-shot I wrote a while ago. This is my first foray into this fandom; I've written almost exclusively for Sherlock prior to this, but trust me when I say these characters are just as near and dear to my heart. This is the first of several Marvel fics I will be publishing. Anyways, enjoy!**

The first time Peter Parker saw the building, he swung past with a passing glance. He noticed the symbol on it with the barest flicker of recognition, and the almost-remembering bothered him enough to come back again. Why he'd swung through Manhattan in the first place was a matter for another time, but he returned to ponder over the strange building.

The symbol looked a bit like a crooked tic-tac-toe board, but somewhere in his brain he knew it had more significance than that. He probably stared at it for twenty minutes before the realization struck him: it was the same symbol that had been on the magic wizard's necklace. The same wizard that had told him five years passed when it felt like no time at all, and that everyone needed to charge into battle immediately. He didn't see much of him during that crazy faceoff with Thanos, but he'd seen Mr. Stark twice. The first time to receive a totally unprecedented—yet greatly appreciated—hug, and the second…the second time he didn't want to remember. Peter's stupid heightened senses had been able to pick up the sound of Mr. Stark's slowly fading heartbeat despite all his efforts to turn them off and go deaf to the horrific spectacle before him.

Now that he stood here, before this building obviously linked with the wizard, he remembered watching the man use the necklace to apparently look forward in time. First of all, Peter had been kind of amazed that the wizard could even do that, but he'd also been afraid because he'd said only one of fourteen million futures resulted in them winning.

Thanos had been defeated, so this must be the one victorious future the wizard had foreseen. But Peter didn't really feel like he won. He'd lost five years of his life to a blip of nothingness, he'd lost all peace of mind for the overall security of the universe, and he'd lost Mr. Stark. That was an awful lot to lose for the supposed 'winning' future.

The longer he perched on a nearby building staring at the symbol, the more his need for answers grew. The wizard could tell him if this was how it was always supposed to happen, so he swung down and simply knocked on the front door. Nobody answered. He should've guessed that a sorcerer's stronghold wouldn't have a doorman on duty, so he changed his tactics to finding another way in. He circled the building, but of course none of the windows were conveniently open. He leapt to the roof and searched it for a way down into the building, but the door to the staircase was locked. Well, that ruled out all the non-destructive options.

Deciding to get creative, he webbed up all the windows on one side of the building in the hopes that the wizard would recognize them as his. He honestly didn't expect it to work, but within minutes a person appeared on the rooftop. It wasn't the wizard Peter had hoped to meet, but maybe he could reach him through this other man.

"Why are you attacking the Sanctum?" the man on the roof asked.

"I'm not attacking, I swear," Peter insisted, swinging over to join him on the rooftop. "I just wanted your attention. Nobody answered the door."

"We don't typically entertain visitors here." He crossed his arms and glared at Peter. "What do you want?"

"I wanna talk to one of your wizards."

"Wizard? Child, we do not practice 'wizardry' within these walls. If you don't even know who we are, why are you here?"

"I know a few of you," he defended. Well…he knew one, but that had to count for something, right? "You guys helped in the battle."

"You'll have to be more specific. We help in a lot of battles."

"You know, the _big _battle! The one where the fate of the universe was at stake. You probably remember it, I mean, everyone was there. It was pretty unforgettable." Peter refused to mention any other reasons that particular battle stuck in his memory.

"Yes, and what do you require of the 'wizard' you wish to speak with?"

"I just need to ask him some questions."

"About?"

"Stuff," Peter said bluntly. He wasn't about to tell everything to this literal stranger; he wasn't _that _naïve.

"I'm afraid none of our sorcerers would reply to a summons requesting, 'Come to the roof to answer some kid's questions about stuff.'"

"Can you stop calling me a kid, okay? I'm Spiderman."

"I know. You covered our building in spider webs. I fail to imagine anyone else would do such a thing."

"Yeah, I guess you're right. Look, can I please talk to Dr. Strange?" he asked, finally using the wizard's name in the hopes the man would recognize that he actually did know someone here. "I really need to talk to him."

"The Sorcerer Supreme is very busy," the man insisted.

"But it's important."

"I'm sure it is."

"Look, can you just tell him that I'm here and let him decide if he'll talk to me or not? I don't see the harm in asking."

"Very well. Please don't dirty up the place with any more of your webs."

"I won't, Mr. Magic Man, I promise." The man rolled his eyes and turned back into the doorway, locking the door behind him with an audible click. He clearly didn't trust Peter not to just break in while he was relaying the message. While he waited, Peter wandered around the roof and gazed at the Manhattan skyline around him. He saw a hospital far off in the distance and wondered if anyone mistakenly thought that Dr. Strange worked there. His name certainly suggested such, although Peter doubted he was a real doctor. The term made for a cool superhero name, though.

It took even less time than Peter expected for Strange to arrive. Maybe he hadn't been as 'busy' as the other man had said he was. "Peter Parker, if my memory serves me well," he said as a way of greeting. Man, he really had to stop introducing himself like that, at this rate the whole world would know his secret identity via other superheroes he'd casually revealed it to.

"Spiderman," he corrected.

"Ah, yes. Your made-up name."

"Yeah." Peter rubbed the back of his neck absentmindedly. His mask was starting to feel stifling in the face of what he was about to do, so he ripped it off. Dr. Strange had already seen him unmasked anyway, so hiding within the suit was pointless. Besides, he really needed to _breathe_.

"What do you require of me?"

"I…I just wanted to know...if this…if this is really the one," he stammered.

"The one what?" Strange clearly didn't understand what he was trying (and failing) to articulate.

"The one where we win. On Titan, you—you said that out of fourteen million some futures, there's only one where we win."

"Do _you_ think we won?" the sorcerer asked with a mysterious quirk of his eyebrow.

"I—I guess so. Thanos is gone, but—but…I don't know. I just keep thinking…how can this be a victory if we didn't all make it through?"

"Is this about Tony?"

Peter was a bit taken aback by his use of Mr. Stark's first name. Only the other Avengers who'd known him for years called him that, and even still some called him "Stark." Peter's lack of answer must have told the sorcerer everything he needed to know, because he didn't repeat his question.

"When you saw this future, back on Titan, did you know it would happen like this?"

Strange took a very long time pondering over this question, or maybe pondering how best to phrase his answer. Peter saw an expression of pure shame and guilt cross his long face, and immediately felt bad for asking. Whatever he knew about this timeline had clearly troubled the sorcerer for a long time.

"Did you know?" Peter repeated, more emphatically this time.

"Yes." The sorcerer looked at his feet to deliver this answer, unwilling to meet Peter's gaze. Peter wanted to be angry, to insist that Strange should've told everyone so they could be prepared, but he couldn't find any emotion within himself except for pity. Strange had known Mr. Stark's fate the entire time, yet kept it to himself to ensure Thanos's defeat and the salvation of the universe. Spiderman, who could lift many times his body weight, failed to imagine the pain of such a burden.

"It was the only way," Strange said solemnly.

"I'm sorry." Peter tried to consider how he would've behaved if he'd known something so tragic was in their near future. Undoubtedly, he would've attempted to bench Mr. Stark, exactly how Mr. Stark had benched him at the airport fight in Germany. Would it have worked…Peter didn't know. Mr. Stark was really stubborn and he wouldn't have wanted to sit out while his entire team fought the armies of darkness. And if Iron Man wasn't there…would they have lost to Thanos? Probably. Peter trusted Dr. Strange's word that this was the only way. The sorcerer had no reason to lie; he was on their side.

"Why are you apologizing?" Strange asked.

"Because…you knew, and you couldn't tell anybody. You knew how it would end, and you had to watch everybody else figure it out in real time. You could've stopped it from happening if you'd wanted to, but also you couldn't because it would jeopardize the universe, and making that kind of decision is crazy hard—I know I don't have willpower like that—and…and…you were all alone," Peter concluded, out of breath from talking without pause for so long.

Dr. Strange sighed and clenched his hands into fists. "I regret that it had to end this way, but it was the only permutation of events that resulted in the elimination of Thanos." Peter failed to understand how it was so impossible for someone else to have grabbed the gauntlet, maybe someone who could survive its impact. Or, he thought selfishly, someone he didn't care about quite so much. Peter shook his head to clear it of such thoughts and focused on another question that had been nagging him. He doubted he'd seen the full scope of the wizard's powers, and there was always a chance they'd extend to this particular area of interest.

"I know you're not a wizard, exactly," Peter began, "But I've seen wizards do all sorts of things."

"What sorts of things?"

"Bring people back from the dead."

"Listen—I'm not a necromancer."

"Not necromancy, that's all dark and creepy. I mean something like—like Jon Snow. They brought him back after he died, and he was just the same, not a zombie or anything like that."

"Who's that?"

"He's just a character from some TV show, but half the people I've met recently are basically fantasy or science fiction characters. I don't see how it's that crazy." He knew he was rambling, and he knew the prospect was rather ridiculous, but he had to try because it was Mr. Stark! He'd literally invented time travel to bring Peter and the others back from the dead, so the least he could do was return the favor and _try_.

"I know how hard this must be, Peter. I didn't spend all that much time with Tony, but in the short, hectic moments we were together I could see how much he cared about you, and how you cared for him. But what happened is unfortunately irreversible."

"Thanos's first snap was reversible. You and I came back, and so did everybody else."

"The stones are gone now, and we can't go around messing with time. I learned that the hard way." A small part of Peter's brain wondered what he was talking about, but he couldn't let his curiosity about the sorcerer's past overtake the matter at hand.

"Are you sure there's no way? You can't look at the future and see if there's any way in which he comes back?"

"As I said, the time stone is gone. So are all the others. I'm sorry, but there's nothing I can do."

Peter knew that would be the answer before he even asked the question, but now that he'd actually heard a firm 'no,' it stung a bit. He'd always held onto the chance that Mr. Stark could come back by the same sort of miracle that had returned everyone from the dust. Evidently, whatever forced controlled the universe were finished doling out miracles for the foreseeable future.

He turned around to leave, but a hand landed on his shoulder to stop him. Whipping his head back around, he caught a brief close-up glance of the sorcerer's hand before Strange retracted it and hid it in the folds of his cloak. Peter thought he saw thick ribbons of scar tissue across the man's fingers, but he couldn't be sure. Another question to save for another time.

"He did it for you," Strange told him.

"What?"

"Stark. He wasn't even going to help get the stones at all, until he picked up a photo of the two of you."

"All of this—was because of me?"

"Yeah. So make it count, Spiderman."


End file.
